Fujitsu Enters Portable External Hard Drive Market

On Monday, Fujitsu is expected to announce its first portable PC hard drive, a 300-Gbyte model based on 2.5-inch drive technology.

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On Monday, Fujitsu is expected to announce its first portable PC hard drive, a 300-Gbyte model based on 2.5-inch drive technology.

The Fujitsu External Hard Disk Drive 300GB will be available in the third quarter of this year for $229. The drive will also ship in a 120-Gbyte version for $129. The larger drive spins at 4,200 RPM, while the smaller drive uses a 5,400-RPM motor. Both drives use the USB 2.0 interface for data as well as power.

While the external hard drive space is already jammed with multiple generations from the major hard drive vendors, the market for portable PC hard drives is less crowded. Those drives, however, walk the fine line between multi-gigabyte flash drives on the low end and semi-portable external hard drives based on 3.5-inch technology. The latter drives, however, are often considered too large to pack into a laptop bag for business travelers.

The drives ship with Apricorn Inc.'s EZ Gig II for Windows, allowing a PC to be backed up as either an image or exact clone, while compressing multiple files into just one. The Cryptainer encryption program also adds password protection to single files.

"We are excited to launch the External HDD product into the marketplace at a time when consumers are demanding compact, high capacity storage products that feature an advanced level of security," said Lorne Wilson, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., in a statement.

"Fujitsu has over thirty-five years of experience in the hard disk drive industry and we have successfully expanded our 2.5-inch [hard disk drive] business over the last fourteen years," Wilson added. "As a result, we have been able to leverage our expertise in this field to create an ideal solution for portable backup and storage solutions."

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